The Family Radio Service (FRS) is a private, two-way, very short-distance voice and data communications service for facilitating family and group activities. The most common use for FRS channels is short-distance, two-way voice communications using small hand-held radios that are similar to walkie-talkies.
Other services that allow similar communications include the General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS).
95.191 (FRS Rule 1) Eligibility and responsibility.
(a) There's no license. Just rules. And you can't use it if you're a representative of a foreign government.
(b) Whoever uses your FRS radio, if they don't follow the rules, you get in trouble. Channels aren't owned. You gotta share.
95.192 (FRS Rule 2) Authorized locations.
(a) FRS Radios can be used
(1) Anywhere in the USA, but not close to the Canadian border. Anywhere in US territories.
(2) in the air anywhere not regulated by some other agency besides the FCC (military installations, for example)
(3) Onboard a plane or a registered or unregistered boat (4) in or over the USA or international waters with the permission of the captain. The USA includes Guam, Puetro Rico, US Virgin Islands, etc.
(5) Follow the laws; follow the treaties
(d) If you are on or near the islands of Puerto Rico, Desecheo, Mona, Vieques, and Culebra in a manner that could pose an interference threat to the Arecibo Observatory, ask permission 45 days beforehand from the FCC.
95.193 (FRS Rule 3) Types of communications.
(a) Use FRS radios to talk with one another or send a breif text message or page.
(b) You can use CTCSS or breif tones over FRS such as DCS or other signalling.
(2) You can use FRS to send digital data manually or only in response to somebody else's manual command such as to request your location, but no more than one digital transmission every 30 seconds unless responding to automatic requests.
(c) Don't break the law, or if you do, don't use an FRS radio to help you do it.
(d) If somebody's having an emergency communication, shut up and let them.
(e) No Autopatch. An autopatch is an automatic radio to telephone link which you can remotely establish using your ham radio (but not FRS or GMRS or MURS radios) to make telephone calls. Technically it isn't quite legal to receive telephone calls from non-hams.
95.194 (FRS Rule 4) FRS units.
(a) The FCC certifies radios to be FRS radios. Technically, you're only supposed to use those certified radios on FRS frequencies and not any others, but I've never heard of any FCC enforcement of this rule. Just don't do anything that'll encourage somebody to want to turn you in.
(b) You're not supposed to modify a certified FRS radio. See above.
(c) You're not supposed to attach any other antenna or power amplifier to an FRS radio that it didn't already come with. See above.
(d) You can't use an FRS radio to store and forward digital information, such as you can in a ham radio packet radio system.
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